Court suspends EU data requests in Facebook investigation

Company claims that the EU is ‘invading the privacy of Facebook employees’

Reuters reports that the extensive data demanded by the European Union in its ongoing antitrust investigation into Facebook’s marketing practices has resulted in the General Court in Luxembourg suspending further data requests pending a final decision. Facebook has provided the European Commission with ‘1.7 million pages of documents’, says the news site, but has now received requests for all documents containing a range of keywords and phrases. The company asked the General Court to intervene, arguing that the terms are too broad and would capture private information. ‘The exceptionally broad nature of the Commission’s requests means we would be required to turn over predominantly irrelevant documents that have nothing to do with the Commission’s investigations’, a company counsel said. EU officials claim they are following normal procedure. Read more.